Cheetah on the prowl keeps wildlife team on toes

Last October,a German running a mushroom farm in Alipur caught “a very big cat” on tape — a leopard — sitting in his fields. Organised searches by the Forest department and NGO Wildlife SOS found nothing. The Forest department,however,commissioned the creation of something Delhi did not possess earlier — a large bait cage for the leopard worth Rs 70,000.

While things settled down for a time,on April 8,the alarm bells rang again: the Sonia Vihar police station got calls from two different people saying a “cheetah” had been seen on Pushta Road.

The cage was set up again on the Khadar. On April 17,the team trying to catch the leopard saw the big cat twice. “Once,it jumped over an eight-foot brick wall and darted into a farmhouse. The second time,it jumped over the team itself and escaped,” says a member of the team.

The fact that the wild leopard has lived in the city for a good six months is a surprise. But even more surprising is that it has lived in harmony with the locals,even as neighbouring Haryana gunned down a wild leopard on April 15 in Jind. In other states too,stray leopards have been gunned down in the past.

To give the city credit,Delhi is trying to do it right. The team has been trying to catch the leopard to rehabilitate it in a forest. “The leopard has not left any traces of animal kills anywhere. Perhaps it is eating smaller animals,” a team member says.

A forest department official said no resident in the area has raised a panic alarm as the cat has not attacked poultry or cattle.

“It hasn’t left traces other than pug marks and claw marks on trees.”

How a bait trap works

At the end of last year,the Forest department got a cage made,designed to trap predators like leopards and tigers. The bait is kept in a separate enclosure,and to get to it,the leopard has to step on a platform. Once it steps close,a pulley brings the door of the cage down. The bait,in a separate enclosure,remains unharmed.